The digital era adds a new complexity to the human test of dealing with death. Loved ones once may have memorialized the departed with private rituals and a notice in the newspaper. Today, as family and friends gather publicly to write and share photos online, the obituary may never be complete.

But families ... can lose control of a process they feel
is their right and obligation when the memories are stored
online—encrypted, locked behind passwords, just beyond reach. One major
cause is privacy law. Current laws, intended to protect the living, fail
to address a separate question: Who should see or supervise our online
legacy? ...

U.S. and Canadian laws, which are similar for the most part, don't treat
digital assets like physical ones that can be distributed according to
wills. In 1986, Congress passed a law forbidding consumer
electronic-communications companies from disclosing content without its
owner's consent or a government order like a police investigation.
Although that law predates the rise of the commercial Internet, courts
and companies have largely interpreted it to mean that the families
can't force companies to let them access the deceased's data or their
accounts. ...

Five states have passed legislation giving executors power over
digital assets. Connecticut and Rhode Island laws cover only email,
while Indiana, Idaho, and Oklahoma laws include social-networking and
blogging accounts. The laws remain largely untested in court.

National action isn't expected for at
least two years. The Uniform Law Commission, a group that drafts state
laws for nationwide consideration, met for the first time in November to
tackle a digital-asset law. Under one proposal, the law could broadly
redefine the "authorized user" of an account to include an agent or a
representative of his estate, says Suzanne Walsh, a Connecticut estate
lawyer leading the committee. ...

Companies fear a patchwork of laws or having to adjudicate who should
get a dead person's files. Handing over data too readily could undermine
their users' trust. And fundamentally, leaving dead people's accounts
active runs counter to a core business proposition of sites like
Facebook, which is to sell advertising targeted at real living people. ...

In 2009, Facebook began allowing family members to either delete or
"memorialize" the accounts of the deceased. In a memorialized account, a
person's existing friends network can still leave comments and photos
with the account of a dead person. But nobody has permission to log in
or edit the account.